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Otherland headed to theaters?

Warner Brothers picked up the film rights to Tad Williams’ Otherland! They’ve placed Dan Lin in charge of production duties, notable for the recent SherlockHolmes films, in addition to currently producing the star-studded Gangster Squad, arriving in theaters later this year. Warner Bros. entrustred script duties to John Scott III, who doesn’t yet have a lot under his belt, other than writing one of the top ten scripts on the 2011 (a guide to highly anticipated film scripts yet to be produced). With a video game adaptation planned to be released sometime in 2012 (pictured below), sci-fi fans might be seeing a lot of Tad Williams over the next few years!

Tad Williams wrote the Otherland tetralogy in the late 90’s, and the genre-bending series remains high on my list of all-time sci-fi classics. The collection, set in a not-so-distant future, follows a disparate confederation of people, trapped together via virtual reality in an online simulation known only as “Otherland.” Hundreds of linked worlds wait to be explored, from Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland to the mythical battlefield of Troy to even stranger lands, beyond description. But a power-hungry serial killer lies in their midst, stalking their minds in the simulation and their bodies in the real world. Their only hope lies in discovering and upending the plans of the shadowy Grail Brotherhood, creators of the Otherland network. Tad Williams’ deft skill at plotting and pacing ensures each novel flies by, and the assortment of characters populating the narrative never feel overdone or unnecessary. Every few years, I pull these books off the shelf, blow the dust off, and give Otherland one more read; this news has given me the perfect excuse to do so again.